ing. Though already fully alive to her
charms, it was at the period of which we are speaking that the young
poet, who was then in his sixteenth year, while the object of his
admiration was about two years older, seems to have drunk deepest of
that fascination whose effects were to be so lasting;--six short
summer weeks which he now passed in her company being sufficient to
lay the foundation of a feeling for all life.

He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every
night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid
of the family pictures of the Chaworths,--that he fancied "they had
taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from
their frames at night to haunt him."[36] At length, one evening, he
said gravely to Miss Chaworth and her cousin, "In going home last
night I saw a _bogle_;"--which Scotch term being wholly unintelligible
to the young ladies, he explained that he had seen a _ghost_, and
would not therefore return to Newstead that evening. From this time he
always slept at Annesley during the remainder of his visit, which was
interrupted only by a short excursion to Matlock and Castleton, in
which he had the happiness of accompanying Miss Chaworth and her
party, and of which the following interesting notice appears in one of
his memorandum-books:--

"When I was fifteen years of age, it happened that, in a cavern in
Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could
lie down) a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close
upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman
(a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The
companion of my transit was M.A.C., with whom I had been long in love,
and never told it, though _she_ had discovered it without. I recollect
my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well. We were a
party, a Mr. W., two Miss W.s, Mr. and Mrs. Cl--ke, Miss R. and _my_
M.A.C. Alas! why do I say MY? Our union would have healed feuds in
which blood had been shed by our fathers,--it would have joined lands
broad and rich, it would have joined at least _one_ heart, and two
persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder),
and--and--and--_what_ has been the result?"

In the dances of the evening at Matlock, Miss Chaworth, of course,
joined, while her lover sat looking on, solitary and mortified. It is
not impossible, indeed, that the dislike which